Friday, January 06, 2006

The Machinery of Perpetual War

The top American operational commander in Iraq has offered a sober assessment of the hurdles facing a new Iraqi government, voicing concerns that sectarian rivalries and incompetence could cripple major ministries and turn newly American-trained Iraqi security forces into militias for hire.

Lt. General John R. Vines, commander of the Iraq theatre of operations, warns that "the development of the Defense and Interior Ministries that sustain Iraqi security forces lags behind the fielding and prowess of more than 220,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers."

Two and a half years after the fall of Hussein's statue, the top U.S. general in Iraq is concerned that the nearly quarter million Iraqi security forces we're training may turn on us and the fledgling Iraqi government. That's reassuring, I guess, if your objective is to create a never-ending state of conflict.

Looking back at how Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and the rest of the neo-cabal have run this woebegone war, it's apparent that they couldn't have screwed things up worse if they'd planned it that way.

And it makes one wonder if maybe they did plan it that way.

#

From the Irony is Dead department:

The administration is accusing war critics of aiding and abetting the enemy even as General Vines cautions that our own forces may be training the enemy.

Support the troops?

#

Continue to be very wary of the administration's happy talk about troop drawdowns. Keep in mind that the neocons' original goal was not a "reduced footprint" in the Middle East. To the contrary, a key component of their vision of the New American Century was to maintain "a substantial American force presence in the Gulf."

5 comments:

From the initial disarming when we went into Iraq, I thought about this: 'wait a minute, we might need those guys' help to secure the new democracy later; or else we'll have to train new forces, and who's to say they won't turn on us (or at least heavily infiltrated)? So WTF?'

And I'm with you about troop drawdowns. It's all smoke and mirrors from those who need to make political hay.

The only thing that stops conspiracy theories from being as true as we fear is that in general, people are lazy and incompetent. The bigger a conspiracy has to be to do what is claimed, the less likely it is that it can be carried off.

That said, it has long been my contention that Bin Laden could not have asked for a better plan than what we did in Iraq. The Iranians are probably even more pleased if that's possible. :-( No doubt that means I'm "aiding and abetting" but that doesn't make it any less true!

Thomas Friedman wrote a piece in the NYT a few years ago about how bin Laden has essentially been baiting the US to invade and occupy an Islamic nation since GWI. And we couldn't have a better cabal in power to conform directly to his plans, especially with the insane disregard for our troops as shown by your post above, re: the lack of armor.

I've basically lost hope in the Democrats to use any of the mounting leverage to take the country back---what can be done?!?

Facebook Badge

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (retired) was a naval flight officer who commanded an aircraft squadron and was operations officer of USS Theodore Roosevelt, the carrier that fought the Kosovo War. He earned a master-of-arts degree in post-modern imperialism at the U.S. Naval War College where many of his essays became required student reading. Jeff’s weekly satires on U.S. foreign policy high jinks appear at Antiwar.com and his critically applauded novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Jeff lives with dogs in a house by the beach on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and in the summer he has a nice tan.